1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet recording method and an ink jet recording apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
An ink jet method, which ejects an ink from an opening of a nozzle, a slit, or a porous film, is compact and low-cost and therefore has been widely used in various printers. Among such an ink jet method, a piezo ink jet method using deformation of a piezoelectric element to eject an ink, and a thermal ink jet method using thermal energy to boil and thereby eject an ink can print high-resolution images at high speed.
In the field of ink jet printers, one of the important tasks is high-speed printing of a high-quality image on plain paper. In ordr to achieve this task, an ink jet recording method has been proposed which includes the steps of applying a liquid containing a compound with a cationic group onto a recording medium, and applying an ink containing an anionic dye to form an image immediately after the liquid penetrates into the recording medium, disappears from the surface of the recording medium, and remains in the recording medium (see Japanese Patent No. 2,667,401)
Further, to achieve rapid drying, high optical density, and high image quality, a color ink set has been proposed in which a black ink contains water and a water-soluble solvent and shows a drying time of 5 seconds or less on plain paper, and each of color inks contains a coloring agent, water, a water-soluble solvent, and a coagulating agent for coagulating a component of the black ink and shows a penetrating time of 5 seconds or less into plain paper (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2001-294788)
Furthermore, in view of preventing bleeding and feathering, an U recording apparatus has been proposed which has an ink discharge portion capable of applying a particular color ink while changing the amount thereof, a discharge portion for discharging a processing liquid containing a component for coagulating the ink, and a control unit for applying a larger amount of the processing liquid to an image boundary portion and applying a relatively smaller amount of the processing liquid to at least a peripheal portion thereof (see JP-A No. 8-216393)
However, in the above apparatus, bleeding (sometimes referred to as feathering) is not sufficiently reduced in some cases depending on the combination of the ink and the processing liquid (an ink or a liquid composition containing a coagulating agent).
In recent years, ink jet recording apparatuses capable of printing at higher speeds have been developed, and thus there is increasing demand for improving the drying speed of inks so as to be able to handle the higher printing speed.
Accordingly, technologies for improving not only drying time and fixation, but also image characteristics such as optical density, bleeding, and intercolor bleeding, have been required.
Thus, there is demand for an ink jet recording method and an ink jet recording apparatus, which can achieve satisfactory drying time, fixation, and optical density, and can suppress intercolor bleeding, image density unevenness, and feathering in high-speed printing.